"For when they shall say, Peace and safety..."

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August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again! October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”﻿September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.htmlSeptember 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnessesSeptember 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.September 14, 2017, 04:31:26 am Christian40 says: i have thought that i'm reaping from past sins then my life has been impacted in ways from having non believers in my ancestry.September 11, 2017, 06:59:33 am Psalm 51:17 says: The law of reaping and sowing. It's amazing how God's mercy and longsuffering has hovered over America so long. (ie, the infrastructure is very bad here b/c for many years, they were grossly underspent on. 1st Tim 6:10, the god of materialism has its roots firmly in the West) And remember once upon a time ago when shacking up b/w straight couples drew shock awe?

Exodus 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;View Shout History

Since Trump has been in office, the number of illegal entry has dropped by 53% at the border.

From The Washington Examiner:

The significant downturn in the number of illegal border crossers between the U.S. and Mexico is "nothing short of miraculous," National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said on C-SPAN Monday.

"As far as the Trump administration's efforts on immigration, this is something they campaigned heavily on," he said. "At six months, where we are on meeting those promises, we are seeing nothing short of miraculous. (Link: www.washingtonexaminer.com) you look at the rhetoric that President Trump has given, it has caused a number of illegal border crossings to go down. We have never seen such a drop that we currently have."

"There's a vibe, there's an energy in the Border Patrol that's never been there before in 20 years that I've been in the patrol," Judd added in a separate Fox News interview.

This month, Customs and Border Protection reported a 53 percent decrease in the number of apprehensions at the southwest border since last year. The number also includes those deemed inadmissible. CBP sees apprehensions as a proxy for how many people are trying to cross the border, and says the drop in apprehensions indicates a drop in attempted illegal crossings.

A four-month high in U.S. consumer confidence reflects Americans’ sunnier views on both their current situation and outlook, a positive sign for the economy, data from the New York-based Conference Board showed Tuesday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average cracked a new milestone on Wednesday: 22,000.

The blue chip index rallied on the back of Apple (AAPL), which gained 4.7% to be tops for the index after reporting better-than-expected earnings on Tuesday after the bell.

Because the Dow is a price-weighted index — meaning it gives weight to members based on the price of its shares, not is market cap — Apple’s surge on Wednesday added about 50 points to the index.

The Dow ultimately gained 52 points, or 0.24%, to close at 22,016.24.

Elsewhere in markets, it was a mixed day with the S&P 500 gaining 1 point, or 0.05%, and the Nasdaq losing just 0.29 points for a move of 0%. Breadth in the market was not particularly impressive, however, with declining stocks outpacing advancers by a margin of about two to one.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar fell to a 27-month low and has erased all of its post-election gains. The dollar had rallied after Donald Trump’s win in anticipation of higher economic growth and potential trade restrictions coming from the administration. Fundamentally, however, the economic picture has not changed in the U.S. with Trump in the White House.

The headline stock indexes on Wednesday masked some churn below the surface, notably in Chinese stocks, which sold off on reports the Trump administration could be looking into Chinese intellectual property rules.

On Tuesday morning, Trump again tweeted about the stock market — a recurring theme over the last few weeks — saying the market could hit an all-time high of 22,000.

The economic highlight was research institute ADP’s report on private sector payroll growth in July, which showed 178,000 jobs were added to the economy during the month, slightly less than expected by economists.

This report comes two days ahead of the government’s official jobs numbers set for release on Wednesday.

The policy comes from a time when segregation was still occurring in schools, and black Americans faced far more obstacles.Today, however, it is outdated and is doing far more harm than good, it needs to go.

Immigration Reform

The next big thing Trump has done recently is his announcement for immigration reform.

Now, we will be focusing on successful, English speaking immigrants, rather than opening the door to hordes of third world, unskilled, non-English speaking migrants; this will make a tremendous difference in the quality of life for all Americans.

By focusing on people who will succeed, rather than those who will simply come here to take advantage of the system, a new era of prosperity and growth for America is on the horizon.

Ending the Trans Insanity in the Military

President Trump has also announced, to the cheers and support of our military, that transgender individuals will not be allowed to serve in the armed forces any longer.

After Obama used our military as a perverse and twisted social experiment, President Trump is completely committed to helping our servicemen and women, and will no longer subject them to the foolish and dangerous “politically correct” environment that was fostered under the previous administration.

Obama put our soldiers in danger by forcing them to deal with left-wing, P.C. foolishness, while cutting their budget and completely abusing them- all while he disparaged their service from the podium with every opportunity available.

Unleashing ICE

Another achievement of the Trump administration has been to “unchain” ICE, thereby allowing our Immigration officers to do their jobs.

Already, we have seen a tremendous drop in the number of illegal aliens attempting to cross the border, and arrests are up exponentially in just a few months’ time.

Deportations are also up, as our federal immigration officers are no longer forced to turn a blind eye to the waves of illegal aliens who’re arrested every single day.

Setting the Stage For THE WALL

This is yet another contrast to Obama’s disastrous policies, and a complete turnaround from Obama’s extremely weak immigration policy in specific.

Going hand in hand with this is, of course, Trump’s “The Wall” plan, which has seen major progress in recent weeks.

“Trump’s Wall” has been granted funding recently, and already, construction is underway, as well as testing of designs in San Diego, California.

With this amazing feat of architecture, President Trump has vowed to stem the flow of illegal aliens who have spent decades pouring over our borders, and have gone on to commit a multitude of crimes against the American people.

Ignore the Liberal Mainstream Media Lies

Despite the narrative from the biased, lying, anti-Trump mainstream media, President Trump has made huge strides in keeping his promises to the American people.

In less than one full year in office, Trump has accomplished so much, and his accomplishments come despite massive obstruction from both Democrats and establishment “Republicans,” all of whom have fought our president every step of the way.

Make no mistake, it will be a long and difficult battle ahead, but under President Trump, America is making a comeback in major ways.

No matter what we face as a country, we are committed to pulling ourselves out of the rut that Obama’s failed presidency left us in.

With a strong and determined leader like Donald Trump, and a good bit of effort on our part, there is no doubt that we will Make America Great Again.

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/maga-economists-stunned-trump-presidency-adds-1000000-new-jobs-just-6-months/MAGA: Economists Are Stunned As Trump Presidency Adds 1,000,000 New Jobs In Just 6 MonthsDefying expectations that job creation would slump this year, America has added more than 200,000 jobs in four out of Trump’s six months in office. That brought the total number of jobs created since the start of February to 1.07 million. On average, the economy created 179,000 jobs in each of the first six months of Trump’s presidency. The Trump administration is pressing forward on tax cuts and regulatory reform, efforts which might also bolster jobs creation.8/4/17

The American economy has added more than one million jobs since President Donald Trump took office.

EDITOR’S NOTE: President Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do, and one million new jobs since he took over certainly attests to that fact. This is why he is so relentlessly attacked, because the fake news media and the Democrats have to make sure Trump fails , they need Trump to fail or they lose power forever. And if that means concocting a fake news narrative about Russian collusion and keeping it going for the next 4 years, that’s exactly what they are going to do.

Defying expectations that job creation would slump this year, America has added more than 200,000 jobs in four out of Trump’s six months in office. That brought the total number of jobs created since the start of February to 1.07 million. On average, the economy created 179,000 jobs in each of the first six months of Trump’s presidency.

Many economists thought that job creation would slow this year after jobs surged in the final two years of the Obama administration. Falling unemployment and an aging population were expected to slow down monthly payroll growth to between 125,00 to 150,000 on average.The Obama failure couldn’t comprehend how Trump could add new jobs because Obama had no idea how to do it:

1 million new jobs in 6 months 209k new jobs in July Unemployment rate at 16 yr low Thanks, @POTUS! pic.twitter.com/5vQaEY9nQP

— GOP (@GOP) August 4, 2017

The unemployment rate has fallen to 4.3 percent, a level that many economists consider near full employment. Wages, however, have not risen by as much as most economists would expect if the economy were operating at full employment. That suggests there may be more room for improvement.

The labor force participation rate remains low, indicating that there may be more room for the economy to grow as low unemployment and rising wages lure Americans back to work.

The Trump administration is pressing forward on tax cuts and regulatory reform, efforts which might also bolster jobs creation.

The Republican Party sent out this tweet to celebrate the landmark. source

Some of the most powerful people in America have been gathering weekly to learn more about God's Word, and this Trump Cabinet Bible study is making history.

They've been called the most evangelical Cabinet in history – men and women who don't mince words when it comes to where they stand on God and the Bible.

Ralph Drollinger of Capitol Ministries told CBN News, "These are godly individuals that God has risen to a position of prominence in our culture."

They're all handpicked by President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

For more, tune into Faith Nation, Wed. @12:30pm, on facebook.com/cbnnews. White House Correspondent Jennifer Wishon will be LIVE to discuss this Bible study's impact on the White House climate.

"I don't think Donald Trump has figured out that he chained himself to the Apostle Paul," Drollinger laughed.

Drollinger is a former NBA-playing giant of a man with an even bigger calling. He founded Capitol Ministries with the idea that if you change the hearts of lawmakers, then their Christian world view will guide them to make good policies.

He's started Bible studies in 40 state capitols, a number of foreign capitols, teaches weekly studies in the U.S. House and Senate and now leads about a dozen members of President Trump's Cabinet in weekly studies of the scriptures.

"It's the best Bible study that I've ever taught in my life. They are so teachable; they're so noble; they're so learned," Drollinger said.

It's groundbreaking since he doesn't think a formal Bible study among executive Cabinet members has been done in at least 100 years.

America's top cop, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also attends the study.

"He'll (Jeff Sessions) go out the same day I teach him something and I'll see him do it on camera and I just think, 'Wow, these guys are faithful, available and teachable and they're at Bible study every week they're in town,'" Drollinger said.

President Trump is invited to attend the Bible studies, too. Each week he receives a copy of Drollinger's teaching.

And Vice President Pence is also planning to join the study as his schedule permits. He also serves as a sponsor.

In Pence, Drollinger sees many similarities to biblical figures like Joseph, Mordecai and Daniel – all men who rose to the number two position in governments at different times in history.

"Mike Pence has respect for the office. He dresses right - like it says Joseph cleaned himself up before he went to stand before the Pharaoh," Drollinger told CBN News.

"Mike Pence has uncompromising biblical tenacity and he has a loving tone about him that's not just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal," he continued. "And then fourthly, he brings real value to the head of the nation."

Like others, Drollinger often compares President Trump to biblical strongman Samson.

"I just praise God for them," he said. "And I praise God for Mike Pence, who I think with Donald Trump chose great people to lead our nation."

President Trump’s crackdown on illegals is already having a positive impact on American workers!

The construction industry is now set to see a HUGE increase in wages.

After decades of stiffing American born citizens in favor of cheap, subpar labor from illegal aliens, the construction industry is now seeing a boom in hiring American workers.

In a way, it’s a real shame that it took a Presidential mandate to force these people to hire AMERICANS instead of illegals, but they’ve been allowed to get away with it for decades.

Now, under President Trump, Americans are seeing jobs that were once all but completely lost to illegals being opened up again, and it’s amazing.

Wonder how the media will spin this to be a negative?

From Breitbart

In a new report by Fox News, Texas construction companies admitted that Trump’s increased enforcement of immigration was forcing them to pay higher wages to U.S. construction workers.

Fox News reported:

“Half of the workers in construction in Texas are undocumented,” [Stan Marek, CEO of Marek Construction] said.

“We do hear that there are a lot of undocumented workers that are leaving the state, going to other states that don’t have the anti-immigrant sentiment and many of them are going back to Mexico.”

Ted Wilson with Residential Strategies, Inc. has run the numbers.

“We’ve seen direct construction costs climb by over 30 percent,” Wilson said, “and a lot of that is directly attributed to what builders are having to pay their subs and trades in wages.”

Meaning, with so few workers out there, construction companies have had to pay more to attract them, which adds to the cost of a home.

The big business lobby and CEOs have long criticized Trump’s immigration crackdown, primarily because their businesses have a direct interest in keeping the pipeline of low-skilled foreign workers coming to the U.S. to drive down the cost of American wages.

Trump’s most recent endorsement of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) RAISE Act, which would cut legal immigration in half in order to drive up the wages of U.S. workers, has shown a renewed commitment to the economic nationalist agenda that propelled his election.

As President Trump’s administration enters the last half of its first year, U.S. corporations are experiencing their best earnings in 13 years, a report finds.

Bloomberg reports that U.S. corporate profits in the second quarter “have beaten estimates at more than three-quarters of the Standard & Poor’s 500 member companies. In every sector, at least half of the companies have surpassed or met expectations, with many also getting a boost from a sinking U.S. dollar.”

“Growth was particularly strong in key regions of North America and Europe, where we grew sales greater than twice GDP, as well as throughout Asia-Pacific,” Dow Chief Executive Officer Andrew Liveris said.

Europe supported U.S. growth during the first three months of this year, but during the second three months, emerging markets came in strong for U.S. earnings.

Mark Luschini of financial service company Janney Montgomery Scott told Bloomberg that multinational corporations are seeing growth and higher earnings in both the U.S. and overseas operations.

Bloomberg reported:

Of the 454 companies in the S&P 500 that have so far reported second-quarter results, 68 percent have beaten analysts’ average estimates for revenue, and 78 percent have topped per-share earnings expectations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Earnings rose an average of 9.8 percent, while sales have climbed 5.5 percent.

Indeed, even as U.S. prospects rise, so has that of much of the world’s economy.

“More of the global economy is participating in this recovery simultaneously, and that’s what shows up in the top-line results, particularly in technology,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Group.

Millions of Americans will revolt if the globalists remove President Trump from office or render him powerless, radio host Michael Savage warned.

Americans could even “resort to mob violence” because they’ll have nothing to lose once they “are finally aware of the fact that they’ve been tricked by their society, and that no matter how hard they work as middle-class people” they have nothing to gain, the Savage Nation host said Friday.

“That is what’s going to happen in this country,” he pointed out. “You have not yet seen mob violence in this country. You’ve seen some mob violence instigated by George Soros’ mobs.”

The Islamic State has set their new sights on the Philippines after they lost ground in Syria and Iraq.

From NBC News:

A video released by ISIS asks would-be fighters to go to the Philippines instead of Syria and Iraq, the latest sign that the terror group is shifting its recruiting tactics as it loses ground to coalition forces in the Middle East.

The seven-minute, English-language video, released by the official ISIS media operation late last month, includes messages from several fighters in the Southern Philippines, and scenes from battles with government troops near the city of Marawi, including the pillaging of a Catholic church.

One of the fighters calls on Muslims in "East Asia, specifically those in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, and Singapore" to migrate and fight alongside the ISIS-linked militants in the Philippines.

A militant identified as "Abul-Yamaan from Marawi" proclaims: "Come forth to the land of jihad. Perform hijrah. Come forth to … Marawi."

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates considered taking military action in the early stages of their ongoing dispute with Qatar, until Donald Trump called leaders of both countries and warned them to back off, according to two people familiar with the U.S. president’s intervention.

The two Gulf countries were looking at ways to remove the Qatari regime, which they accused of sponsoring terrorism and cozying up to Iran, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were confidential. Trump told Saudi and U.A.E. leaders that any military action would trigger a crisis across the Middle East that would only benefit the Iranians, one of the people said.

It wasn’t clear when the conversations took place. The Saudis, backed by the U.A.E. and two other regional allies, broke off diplomatic ties with Qatar in early June, imposed an economic embargo and cut transport links. They’ve since issued multiple demands, including the closure of Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, that haven’t been met. Qatar denies all the accusations and accuses the Saudis of seeking to dominate smaller neighbors.

Saudi Arabia denied that military action was ever considered. The allegations are entirely incorrect, have already been denied, and amount to nothing more than typically misleading Qatari propaganda, said a Saudi official source familiar with the matter. Emirati officials have said in the past that the dispute can only be resolved by political, not military, means. A Bloomberg reporter who requested comment was directed to those past statements.

A U.S. official familiar with the conversations said that Trump put pressure on all parties and encouraged Qatar to reach out to the Saudi-led bloc.

‘Thank God’

The dispute among some of the world’s top energy producers flared up a few days after Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his first overseas trip as president, and he was closely involved from the start. Trump publicly backed the Saudi demands, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other administration members took a more cautions line. Saudi Arabia is a longstanding U.S. ally, while Qatar hosts the biggest American military base in the region.

The standoff has yet to be resolved, despite efforts by Kuwait to mediate. Trump made a push to settle it this month, after talks in Washington with Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah. The U.S. president made a flurry of calls with Gulf leaders, saying the dispute was distracting U.S. allies from forging a united front against Iran.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy is finally sturdy enough for the Federal Reserve to withdraw the extraordinary support it has provided it since the depths of the recession and financial crisis.

In a move that that could nudge consumer borrowing costs higher, the Fed agreed Wednesday to begin gradually shedding much of the roughly $3.5 trillion in bonds it snapped up during and after the downturn to lower long-term interest rates.

"We're working down our balance sheet because we think in some sense it's no longer needed," Fed Chair Janet Yellen said at a news conference. "We feel the U.S. economy is performing well."

And while the Fed held its key short-term interest rate steady, at a range of 1% to 1¼%, it maintained its forecast for a third rate hike in 2017 and three increases next year. But in a nod to weak inflation, the Fed cut its projection from three rate increases to two in 2019. By 2020, the Fed expects its benchmark rate to be 2.9%, and it trimmed its estimate of the rate over the longer-run to 2.8% from 3%.

As screenshots and shares of the rumor spread, many conflated Dollar Tree with competitors Family Dollar or Dollar General, causing confusion about which chain of low-price retail stores was purportedly closing. Regardless, React365 is a prank generator that allows users to fabricate their own phony headlines for sharing on social media:

Nashville Police have identified the suspect of a mass shooting at a church Sunday morning as 25-year-old Emanuel Kidega Samson.

Samson is being charged with murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in the attack that killed one and left at least seven other people injured at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, a town just south of Nashville, Tenn.

Samson is a bodybuilder who attended high school in Tennessee and is originally from Karthoum, Sudan, according screenshots of the suspect’s Facebook page obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation before the account was taken down. Police say he is a legal resident and came to the U.S. in the 1990s.

A Nashville Police Department spokesman said the shooter entered the church after 11 a.m. CST wearing a neoprene ski mask. One woman was shot in the parking lot before the shooter entered the church and opened fire on about 42 people still inside.

One church member, 22-year-old Caleb Engle, confronted the shooter before being pistol whipped in the face. Engle then went to his car to retrieve a gun, which he has under a concealed carry license.

Engle returned to the church to confront the gunman again. The gunman shot himself in the face when the man returned, possibly by accident.

“He’s the hero here,” Nashville police chief Steve Anderson said. “He’s the person who stopped this madness in its tracks.”

President Trump and his administration intend on introducing a refugee cap of 45,000 admissions.

From The Hill:

The Trump administration is planning to lower the cap for refugee admissions to 45,000 — its lowest point since the U.S. began setting the limits in 1980.

The Wall Street Journal reported the proposed cap on Tuesday, but said the number will not be finalized until President Trump confers with members of Congress on Wednesday.

The planned decrease is Trump's latest move to curb the the number of refugees allowed to enter the U.S. After taking office in January, he lowered the cap to 50,000 and also tried to temporarily suspend refugee admissions altogether as part of his travel ban executive orders.

Former President Obama announced last year that the U.S. would accept up to 110,000 refugees in 2017. In recent years, the cap has generally fallen between 70,000 and 80,000.

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Wednesday an unnamed foreign leader told him at the United Nations last week that the country would soon announce plans to build or expand five automobile industry factories in the United States.

"I just left the United Nations last week and I was told by one of the most powerful leaders of the world that they are going to be announcing in the not too distant future five major factories in the United States, between increasing and new, five," Trump said in a speech on tax reform in Indianapolis. He added the factories were in the automotive industry.

Trump did not name the country or its leader. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and 12 other leaders in New York at the U.N. General Assembly meeting last week, but did not meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel who was in Germany ahead of an election.

Automakers in Japan and Germany have both announced investments in the United States this year, with companies coming under pressure from Trump’s bid to curb imports and hire more workers to build cars and trucks in the U.S.

Investments to expand U.S. vehicle production capacity also reflect intensified competition for market share in the world’s most profitable vehicle market.

In August, Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> said it would build a $1.6 billion U.S. assembly plant with Mazda Motor Corp <7261.T>.

Toyota also said this week it was investing nearly $375 million in five U.S. manufacturing plants to support U.S. production of hybrid powertrains.

Last week, German automaker Daimler AG said it would spend $1 billion to expand its Mercedes Benz operations near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to produce batteries and electric sport utility vehicles and create more than 600 jobs.

Rival German luxury automaker BMW AG said in June it would expand its U.S. factory in South Carolina, adding 1,000 jobs.

And last month, Volkswagen AG’s brand president Herbert Diess said the company expected to bring electric SUV production to the United States and could add production at its Tennessee plant.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and David Shepardson; Writing by David Alexander; Editing by Clive McKeef)

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/man-created-facebook-like-button-now-warns-mind-can-hijacked-social-media/Man Who Created The Facebook ‘Like’ Button Now Warns Your Mind Can Be ‘Hijacked’ Through Social MediaIn 2007, Rosenstein was one of a small group of Facebook employees who decided to create a path of least resistance – a single click – to “send little bits of positivity” across the platform. Facebook’s “like” feature was, Rosenstein says, “wildly” successful: engagement soared as people enjoyed the short-term boost they got from giving or receiving social affirmation, while Facebook harvested valuable data about the preferences of users that could be sold to advertisers. The idea was soon copied by Twitter, with its heart-shaped “likes” (previously star-shaped “favourites”), Instagram, and countless other apps and websites.10/6/17

Justin Rosenstein had tweaked his laptop’s operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook. But even that wasn’t enough.

“And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Revelation 13:15 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s very interesting to understand that the very people who created the highly-addictive ‘like’ system have now installed extensions on their devices to block those same features from being active. What does that tell you about how enslaving social media can be? Just imagine how it will be in a few years when AI is fully rolled out, and the devices are doing our thinking for us. The “brave new world’ is a very scary place to be, and I honestly don’t think any of us really know what we’re playing with.

In August, the 34-year-old tech executive took a more radical step to restrict his use of social media and other addictive technologies. Rosenstein purchased a new iPhone and instructed his assistant to set up a parental-control feature to prevent him from downloading any apps.

He was particularly aware of the allure of Facebook “likes”, which he describes as “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure” that can be as hollow as they are seductive. And Rosenstein should know: he was the Facebook engineer who created the “like” button in the first place.

A decade after he stayed up all night coding a prototype of what was then called an “awesome” button, Rosenstein belongs to a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called “attention economy”: an internet shaped around the demands of an advertising economy.

These refuseniks are rarely founders or chief executives, who have little incentive to deviate from the mantra that their companies are making the world a better place. Instead, they tend to have worked a rung or two down the corporate ladder: designers, engineers and product managers who, like Rosenstein, several years ago put in place the building blocks of a digital world from which they are now trying to disentangle themselves. “It is very common,” Rosenstein says, “for humans to develop things with the best of intentions and for them to have unintended, negative consequences.”

Rosenstein, who also helped create Gchat during a stint at Google, and now leads a San Francisco-based company that improves office productivity, appears most concerned about the psychological effects on people who, research shows, touch, swipe or tap their phone 2,617 times a day.

There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ. One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity – even when the device is turned off. “Everyone is distracted,” Rosenstein says. “All of the time.”But those concerns are trivial compared with the devastating impact upon the political system that some of Rosenstein’s peers believe can be attributed to the rise of social media and the attention-based market that drives it.

Drawing a straight line between addiction to social media and political earthquakes like Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, they contend that digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete.

In 2007, Rosenstein was one of a small group of Facebook employees who decided to create a path of least resistance – a single click – to “send little bits of positivity” across the platform. Facebook’s “like” feature was, Rosenstein says, “wildly” successful: engagement soared as people enjoyed the short-term boost they got from giving or receiving social affirmation, while Facebook harvested valuable data about the preferences of users that could be sold to advertisers. The idea was soon copied by Twitter, with its heart-shaped “likes” (previously star-shaped “favourites”), Instagram, and countless other apps and websites.

It was Rosenstein’s colleague, Leah Pearlman, then a product manager at Facebook and on the team that created the Facebook “like”, who announced the feature in a 2009 blogpost. Now 35 and an illustrator, Pearlman confirmed via email that she, too, has grown disaffected with Facebook “likes” and other addictive feedback loops. She has installed a web browser plug-in to eradicate her Facebook news feed, and hired a social media manager to monitor her Facebook page so that she doesn’t have to.

“One reason I think it is particularly important for us to talk about this now is that we may be the last generation that can remember life before,” Rosenstein says. It may or may not be relevant that Rosenstein, Pearlman and most of the tech insiders questioning today’s attention economy are in their 30s, members of the last generation that can remember a world in which telephones were plugged into walls.

It is revealing that many of these younger technologists are weaning themselves off their own products, sending their children to elite Silicon Valley schools where iPhones, iPads and even laptops are banned. They appear to be abiding by a Biggie Smalls lyric from their own youth about the perils of dealing crack ****: never get high on your own supply.

One morning in April this year, designers, programmers and tech entrepreneurs from across the world gathered at a conference centre on the shore of the San Francisco Bay. They had each paid up to $1,700 to learn how to manipulate people into habitual use of their products, on a course curated by conference organiser Nir Eyal.

Eyal, 39, the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, has spent several years consulting for the tech industry, teaching techniques he developed by closely studying how the Silicon Valley giants operate.

“The technologies we use have turned into compulsions, if not full-fledged addictions,” Eyal writes. “It’s the impulse to check a message notification. It’s the pull to visit YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for just a few minutes, only to find yourself still tapping and scrolling an hour later.” None of this is an accident, he writes. It is all “just as their designers intended”.

He explains the subtle psychological tricks that can be used to make people develop habits, such as varying the rewards people receive to create “a craving”, or exploiting negative emotions that can act as “triggers”. “Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation,” Eyal writes.facebook-like-button-creator-says-highly-addictive-warns-social-media-banned

Less than 5 minutes after posting this story on social media, Facebook banned me for 6 days in retaliation for daring to expose them.

Attendees of the 2017 Habit Summit might have been surprised when Eyal walked on stage to announce that this year’s keynote speech was about “something a little different”. He wanted to address the growing concern that technological manipulation was somehow harmful or immoral. He told his audience that they should be careful not to abuse persuasive design, and wary of crossing a line into coercion.

But he was defensive of the techniques he teaches, and dismissive of those who compare tech addiction to drugs. “We’re not freebasing Facebook and injecting Instagram here,” he said. He flashed up a slide of a shelf filled with sugary baked goods. “Just as we shouldn’t blame the baker for making such delicious treats, we can’t blame tech makers for making their products so good we want to use them,” he said. “Of course that’s what tech companies will do. And frankly: do we want it any other way?”

Without irony, Eyal finished his talk with some personal tips for resisting the lure of technology. He told his audience he uses a Chrome extension, called DF YouTube, “which scrubs out a lot of those external triggers” he writes about in his book, and recommended an app called Pocket Points that “rewards you for staying off your phone when you need to focus”.

Finally, Eyal confided the lengths he goes to protect his own family. He has installed in his house an outlet timer connected to a router that cuts off access to the internet at a set time every day. “The idea is to remember that we are not powerless,” he said. “We are in control.”

But are we? If the people who built these technologies are taking such radical steps to wean themselves free, can the rest of us reasonably be expected to exercise our free will?

Not according to Tristan Harris, a 33-year-old former Google employee turned vocal critic of the tech industry. “All of us are jacked into this system,” he says. “All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are.” source

The Supreme Court threw out one of the cases against President Trump's travel ban.

washingtonexaminer.com reports: The Supreme Court dropped one of the cases challenging President Trump's travel ban on Tuesday.

The high court said Tuesday that Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project is moot, as the 90-day ban on foreign nationals entering the U.S. expired and has since been replaced by different guidance.

"Following our established practice in such cases, the judgment is therefore vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit with instructions to dismiss as moot the challenge to [the ban]," said the Supreme Court in an unsigned summary disposition.

When They Shall Say "Peace And Safety": Polls Show Americans Are The Most Optimistic They Have Been In A Very Long Time

By a very wide margin, this is the most optimistic that Americans have been about the future since I started The Economic Collapse Blog in late 2009. Even though the middle class is shrinking, 102 million working age Americans do not have a job, and we are now 21 trillion dollars in debt, most people are feeling really good about things right now. Especially among Republicans, there is an overwhelming consensus that the United States is starting to head in the right direction and that better times are ahead. As a result, so many of the exact same people that were “prepping” while Barack Obama was in the White House are now partying now that Donald Trump is president. But none of the long-term trends that are systematically destroying our nation have been significantly altered, and none of our long-term problems have been solved. We are still steamrolling down a path toward national suicide, but most Americans simply do not care.

What Americans do care about is that it seems to be easier to find a job at the moment than it has in a very long time. In fact, the percentage of Americans that believe that it is “a good time to find a quality job” is at the highest level that Gallup has ever recorded…

Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that now is a good time to find a quality job in the U.S., the highest percentage in 17 years of Gallup polling. Optimism about the availability of good jobs has grown by 25 percentage points since Donald Trump was elected president.

Gallup has asked Americans to say whether it is a good time or bad time to find a quality job monthly since August 2001. Prior to 2017, the percentage saying “good time” never reached 50%, but since Trump took office in January that year, the percentage has stayed at or above 50% and has been higher than 60% in eight of the past nine months.

A Rasmussen survey that asked a similar question came up with very similar results.

Of course the reality of the matter is that 66 percent of all jobs in the United States pay less than 20 dollars an hour, and 78 million Americans are participating in the “gig economy” because they need to supplement their normal incomes in order to make ends meet.

But perception is sometimes more powerful than reality, and right now the perception is that the U.S. economy is doing well…

“Nothing is better for the issues about trade wars or issues about G-7 than a good economy,” Omar Aguilar, chief investment officer for equities at Charles Schwab Investment Management, said by phone. “The jobs report on Friday gave a lot of people confidence that the U.S. economy is still pretty solid.”

Small businesses in the United States are also feeling extremely optimistic right now.

In fact, one survey found that small business optimism has surged to record highs…

The Q2 MetLife & U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index (Index) released today recorded an overall score of 68.7, up 2.4 points from the Q1 score of 66.3, driven in part by the strongest local economic outlook on record, a firmer hiring environment, and a stronger backdrop for investing. Two out of every three small business owners are optimistic about their company and the small business environment in the United States.

That is definitely a good sign, because we desperately need small businesses to do well, but is all of this optimism really warranted?

The financial markets continue to be filled with optimism as well. Despite the outbreak of an international trade war and tremendous turmoil over in Europe, the Nasdaq closed at a brand new record high on Tuesday.

In recent years stock prices have just continued to go up and up and up no matter what news breaks, and now we are facing the greatest stock market bubble in our history.

How long do we have until it finally bursts?

There is a lot of optimism in the housing market as well. At this point, a staggering 64 percent of all adults in this country believe that housing prices will continue to go up over the next year. The following comes from Marketwatch…

A majority of U.S. adults (64%) continue to believe home prices in their local area will increase over the next year, a recent survey released by polling firm Gallup concluded. That’s up nine percentage points over the past two years and is the highest percentage since before the housing market crash and Great Recession in the mid-2000s.

The level of optimism is edging closer to the 70% of adults in 2005 who said prices would continue rising. That, of course, was less than one year before the peak of the housing market bubble in early 2006, which was largely fueled by a wave of subprime lending.

Moving beyond short-term concerns, Americans are also becoming increasingly optimistic about the long-term future too. A recent Gallup survey discovered that approximately 60 percent of all Americans believe that our young people “will have a better life than their parents did”…

About six in 10 Americans say it is very or somewhat likely that today’s young people will have a better life than their parents did. The latest reading marks continued improvement since the low of 44% in 2011 but is still not back to the level of 66% measured in February 2008.

Hopefully the optimists will be correct, but I do not believe they will be. If we keep doing the same things that we have been doing as a nation, it is simply not possible that there will be any sort of a bright future for America.

And I will tell you one area where Americans are quite pessimistic. One recent survey found that 77 percent of all Americans believe that morality is in decline in this country. Our national character continues to deteriorate at a frightening pace, and most Americans appear to be quite aware that this is happening.

But instead of changing our ways, we proudly believe that our “greatness” will allow us to continue to enjoy a massively inflated debt-fueled standard of living for a very long time to come.

Unfortunately for us, it simply does not work that way, and as a nation we are way overdue for a very serious wake up call.

Many atheists and agnostics have a negative reaction to prayers said for them, CNN reported Monday, so Christians should probably keep them to themselves to avoid offending others.

Citing a recent study, CNN said that “some atheists and agnostics would pay money” to avoid having prayers sent their way after suffering a natural disaster such as a hurricane.

Sending thoughts and prayers in the wake of disasters is “controversial,” said Linda Thunström, an economist at the University of Wyoming who co-authored the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, based on interaction with some 400 residents in North Carolina following Hurricane Florence’s destruction in 2018, said that atheists and agnostics are “prayer averse” — willing to pay to avoid receiving prayers — and are especially against receiving thoughts and prayers “from Christians.”

Nonreligious people “were willing to pay about $1.66 to avoid a prayer from a priest and more than double that price at $3.54 to avoid one from a Christian stranger,” CNN stated.

“The last result is surprising because one might expect that atheists/agnostics would be indifferent to people praying for them — why care, if you don’t believe in the gesture?” said Thunström.

“But that is not what we find — atheists and agnostics are averse to prayers,” she said, and are willing to pay money in order “not to get a prayer from a Christian stranger.”

“Hence, it is important to think about who the target person is when sending thoughts and prayers in the wake of hardship,” she said.

Along with the emotional aversion that atheists and agnostics may experience to prayers said for the, critics also argue “that these gestures are meaningless and can reduce material help or structural reforms aimed at mitigating natural and social disasters,” the study said.

Some have included the phrase “I’ll pray for you” in lists of micro-aggressions, suggesting that this expression can “communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward people.”

One atheist said that being told “I’ll pray for you” with the claim it was a compliment “invokes the same feeling as equating sexually lewd comments with compliments.”

REV 6:16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:ISA 2:19 And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.